Entering a season with only three returnees from last year’s team normally signals a rebuilding year. But not always, Sandhills Community College volleyball coach Alicia Hill says.

“A lot of people see bringing three people back as a rebuilding year, but I don’t see it being a rebuilding season at all,” she said before a recent practice. “I expect us to be first place this year.”

Hill is entering her second year as the third-year program’s head coach. The former North Moore and UNC Pembroke standout led the Flyers to a second-place conference finish last season and shared Region X coach of the year honors.

Nevertheless, she’s thinking of 2010 as being her first season at the helm.

“I like to call this my first year, because last year when I came in, I had these girls and our schedule was already set, so we just went with what we had,” she said. “This year, I’ve recruited these girls and made my own schedule, I’ve been training these girls this spring, they’ve had 20 open gyms this summer, and then we just started two-a-days.

“I think we’ve got a good group of girls who all want the same thing — they want to win and they want to make it to nationals.”

Headlining the trio of returnees is Sarah Thomas, a Western Harnett graduate who was an honorable mention all-region selection as an outside hitter in 2009. The team’s tallest player at 5 feet, 9 inches, Thomas is moving to middle hitter in 2010.

The other two returning sophomores are setter Alisha Ritter and outside hitter Angie Cruz, both North Moore graduates.

A team with a decidely local feel, the Flyers welcome several newcomers to the program who hail from Moore County or surrounding areas.

North Moore graduate Miranda Love, an outside hitter who played her freshman season at St. Andrews, joined the program last spring.

“She brings a lot of experience coming from a DII school to a JUCO,” Hill said. “A lot of the stuff we teach the girls she already knows, so that’s good.”

Pinecrest graduate Paige Horne will play setter for the Flyers, while Union Pines graduate Katie McKenzie figures to be the team’s libero.

Twins Shana and Samantha Morgan are also North Moore graduates who will add front-line depth for the Flyers. Shana is a middle hitter while Samantha plays outside hitter.

Other team members include Richmond graduate Michelle Brown, Western Harnett graduate Jessica Marion and Mandy Blair, a military wife from Kansas. Rachael Knecht is back for her second season as assistant coach.

Hill says the team has good chemistry coming out of the spring workouts and summer open gyms. More so, she says the players have the type of work ethic and motivation that can’t be taught.

“They have a good attitude and hustle — things that you can’t really teach,” she said. “They already bring those things to the program, so I think teaching the skill part is the easy part. If you’ve already got somebody who has a good attitude and hustles and knows what it’s like to play a team sport, then you can teach them the skill part any day.”

What the Flyers don’t have is a lot of height, but Hill thinks that could work to the team’s advantage.

“Size will be one of our weaknesses, but there’s so many parts of the game that can benefit off our weakness,” she said. “If we’re a huge team and all we can do is swing but we can’t play defense, then we’re never going to win games.

“I think it’s going to be to our advantage that we’re a smaller team. I think some teams will come in and see us, we range from 5-1 to 5-9, and they’ll see that as they’re not that big, we can hit over them, they’re not going to be a good blocking team. But we’re going to be real scrappy, so I think we’ll take a lot of people by surprise.”

For team stengths, Hill lists ball contral, defense and serving.

“If we can keep the ball in play, the arm swings will come,” she said. “We don’t have to be really big as long as we find our holes.”

Hill said the summer open gym sessions sometimes drew as many as 20 participants, nearly twice as many as players on the roster. Furthermore, she said two-a-day practices are seldom seen among junior college programs that don’t offer scholarships.

For their part, the players don’t seem to mind.

“These girls are eager,” Hill said. “They know what we expect and finishing second is not an option this year.”

The Flyers open the season against Vance-Granville CC Aug. 27 on their home court at the Dempsey Student Center.